Returnings

Today is the first day of 2018. It’s a Monday, the first day of the week, and that is satisfying. A reset day for a reset year.

At 2:30pm on Thursdays, I take the key to the bathroom to reapply my lipstick. I wrap up whatever email I’m writing or article I’m flowing and at 2:45, I walk across Madison Square Park for my weekly 3:00pm appointment.

It’s not eggplant, nor is it marsala (2015’s famously mystery meat colored disaster), and it’s definitely not lilac. It’s not quite Barney-level magenta, nor is it the dusty shade of Ursula’s aubergine skin in The Little Mermaid. It’s just...purple.

Some people know you so well—the good parts and the bad—that you cannot help but love them. It’s physically impossible not to.

I’m not sure when I would have gone to confession if it hadn’t been for my upcoming trip, but I was going to St. Louis for the weekend, which meant I was going to Mass at the Catholic Student Center, which meant I was going to Mass for the first time in several months, which meant I had to go to confession in order to receive the Eucharist.

I knew which way to turn, where to grab a taxi. I knew the turns of the highway and the exits to take, the names of the roads, even the patterns of the traffic lights and crosswalks. It was uncanny—at once completely familiar but entirely strange.

You live and breathe paradox and contradiction, but you can no more see the beauty of them than the fish can see the beauty of the water. 
— Michael Frayn, Copenhagen